Sierra Leonean Cuisine

Sierra Leonean cuisine is hearty, flavourful West African food built above all on rice, which is so central that a meal without it is scarcely considered a meal at all. The staple pairing is rice with rich, savoury sauces and stews, or plasas, most beloved being cassava leaf and potato leaf, pounded greens slow-cooked with palm oil, fish, meat and seasoning. Groundnut stew, okra, jollof rice, fresh Atlantic seafood, and cassava and plantain feature widely, all generously spiced with fiery scotch bonnet pepper. Street foods like fried fish, akara bean fritters and roasted corn abound, and the food is shared with the country's famous warmth.

What you actually see

• Cassava leaf and potato leaf - the beloved rich green stews with rice.
• The rice - the all-important staple of every meal.
• Groundnut stew and jollof - the peanut stew and spiced rice.
• The fresh seafood - the abundant Atlantic fish.

When to go

Year-round; local cookery shops and eateries serve the hearty rice-and-stew dishes cheaply, and the coast is the place for abundant fresh seafood. The food is bold and often genuinely spicy, best enjoyed at local spots in the warm, sociable spirit for which Sierra Leoneans are famous.

Honest expectations

Sierra Leonean food is hearty, rice- and stew-based and often genuinely fiery West African fare rather than a refined or varied restaurant cuisine, so its appeal is honest, bold, satisfying flavour and the warm way it is shared rather than culinary subtlety; the usual care with water and street food applies. Enjoyed at a local cookery shop with cassava-leaf stew over rice or fresh grilled fish, though, in the country's famously warm spirit, the food is genuinely tasty and a real taste of West Africa.

Nearby

Freetown's markets and cookery shops and the coast are the places to eat.